Mike Brewer

MSc Economics and Econometrics (Distinction), University of Bristol, 1997BA Economics and Mathematics (1st class), University of Cambridge, 1996

Mike is a Professor of Economics at the University of Essex. His main research interests are in how welfare benefits, labour market programmes and the tax system affects decisions made by households. He has written widely about welfare reform, and especially the changes to social security benefits and tax credits proposed by the current UK Government. He has been a long-time proponent of a simpler and more integrated welfare system, and his work on an integrated benefit system has been acknowledged as having informed current government policy.

We document that households in the UK with extremely low measured income tend to spend much more than those with merely moderately low income. This phenomenon is evident throughout three decades worth of microdata and across different employment states, levels of education and marital statuses.

Reports and comment

We examine the effectiveness of two time-limited in-work benefits. These were introduced in Great Britain in the early to mid 2000s and were known as ‘in work credit’ (IWC) and the ‘Employment Retention and Advancement demonstration’ (ERA).

In this new work, the researchers compared what happened to the labour market outcomes of mothers and fathers as their children moved from being entitled to a free part-time nursery place (offering 15 hours of free childcare per week) to a full-time place at primary school (which effectively offers ...